Trouble with jackfruit or rather should it be Trouble with Munchkin? We have been getting so much jackfruit, I have been needing to process about 4 of them at a time every 2 to 3 days. You will only understand how I feel if you have ever needed to clean a jackfruit yourself. I don’t really want to complain because it is food but boy, is it a lot of work!! The other day, I went a bit mad on Gnome because it was so maddening and that’s how mad I was because I had done two and I had two more to go and I couldn’t take it anymore!!
Anyway, he tried to be diplomatic and told me to leave the last two jackfruit alone and do them the next day. He has his own work to do too and it isn’t like he is just sitting around doing nothing so it’s hard to get maddening mad!!
The next day, I tried it again with an all-new, well-behaved “thank the lord for our daily bread” Munchkin attitude. I am leading you into a cloudy story with a silver-lining if you haven’t noticed already….
So far, the jackfruit that I have been preparing are all the firm variety so they hard to cut through with a knife (blisters on the hands), the core is difficult to cut and each single piece of fruit requires to be pried off with the stubby fingers of a Munchkin. Arrrgh!!!!
Oh and don’t forget the boiling of the seeds and peeling each seed one by one! Oh and don’t forget the wine-making! It is a whole day affair.
Who said farm life was about rainbows and unicorns (what unicorns??). 😉
Okay, so I am so far in a good mood, thanking the lord…keeping the good mood going…and onto the fourth jackfruit.
And guess what? It is the biggest one…it is humongous and I am expecting a two hour job. It cuts like butter, flops open, the spine pops out and the fruit pop out too. What an amazing revelation…this last jackfruit (from the same tree??) is completely different and has a soft, cotton-like texture. It is sooooo easy to prepare and I did it in half the time. Afterwards, I told Gnome about it and we realised that when we planted the jackfruit “tree” we stuck five seeds into into the ground. Two of them germinated, grew up and intertwined giving the appearance of one tree hence the reason for two different varieties seeming to appear on a single tree.
This is the other type of jackfruit which is soft in texture. If you like it, you would describe it as buttery; if you don’t like it, you would say it was snotty. Nonetheless, easier to clean and if you are making wine, the texture is not an issue. On the whole, it was easy peasy compared to preparing the other type.
Cotton-like, soft variety:
Okay moral of the story. Stay in a good mood and something good (donum bonum/ good gift) can happen. Well, that’s Munchkin and Gnome philosophy and it works if you do it. It makes sense but harder to stay in a good mood (all the time) in reality. Got to persist though….
We have had heavy rains and we are surrounded by a sea of water, the Jacinto River is up and there are flood signs everywhere. The river floods onto our road every year and it looks like this occurrence is imminent. In addition to all this, the truck is behaving dodgy (oh how technical of me!) and the two tonne front gate is still done broke. In other words we are on forced house arrest!
In response to this, I lifted my arms up in the air and flailed them from side to side. Testily I said,
Gnome:
